Brethren in the business world

Yesterday was spent (mostly) in a business meeting. My employers have signed up with a company that provides a management system with a managed database and server, and their representatives needed to go through a long list of questions in order to tailor the software to the needs they discover.

That's interesting in itself, because it has taken less than two years to move from "no computers ever" to near normality. All the while that I've been jury-rigging systems using nothing more than MS Office, I've been saying that it would be better to do things properly, but it was never an option. Now it is, and there will soon be very little to differentiate brethren businesses from others in their systems. I'm a little bit wistful that my funny little systems with customised quirks will be less needed but, as I say, it's been something I've recommended all along. And it turns out (doesn't it always?) that the new system is not quite so all-embracing as it was first presented, so no doubt I'll be kept busy with things that need doing and in the meantime there's a major transition period.

But what led me to post was the meeting itself, which made me chuckle internally.

The brethren way is to compare notes on everything they do, and every option tried on anything that may need doing, and converge on something. So various brethren businesses have been signing up for software, and the company that comes out best is now getting a big boost to their sales ... and this is the company in question here. That happens quite often, and a particular company will suddenly become very familiar with brethren as the word goes round.

And always, they can't resist getting sucked in. It must feel like privileged access to a secret society or something. Whatever it is, they start to drop hints about things they know, people they're familiar with, and make clear how unsurprised they are at oddities in the interaction. Yesterday, for example, the meeting was structured to avoid the need for lunch. Names were dropped. Other brethren were proclaimed to have found particular features valuable. Awareness was self-consciously demonstrated of the need for some settings.

To be honest, most brethren don't like this much. As I've said before, they like to maintain a feeling of mystery, and are suspicious of people getting too interested in the detail. That often comes across, yet still these outsiders can't help it.

At one point, the main man in this case had to show off that he was well inside by claiming knowledge of policy that hadn't yet been announced. Apparently he'd been chatting to the person at the central brethren computer organisation who has oversight of systems, and got hold of the fact that company websites were on the way - so we shouldn't rule it out. Keep the option open, nudge nudge wink wink.

I do enjoy watching people interact, even if I do have to go without lunch to do it.